I had to go into town yesterday and I used the opportunity to cruise the relatively well stocked supermarket in the next town over.  I was  pushing the cart down the meat department aisle and did a double take when I saw this fresh picnic ham on offer for less than two dollars a pound.I poked several cloves of garlic into the thing, rubbed in salt and pepper, and set it into a slow oven for the rest of the day with the temperature set for 220 or so.  I ran the probe from my handy dandy oven thermometer into the general area of the roasting pan  without sticking it into the meat – I wanted to see how the thermostat in the oven handled the low setting.  There were some wide swings throughout the run but I tweaked the knob until the average was about where I wanted it.  The temps swung from 195 to 245 as the element cycled on and off.  Next time I may place the big pizza stone I have as a moderating thermal mass.  Couldn’t hurt.

Anyway, the ham spent about ten hours in there and I was wanting to finish it up before it got too late so I did insert the probe to see what the temp was inside the roast.  It was showing 165 degrees and I called that done enough.  It would have been fine for another few hours.It was getting pretty late but I went ahead and reduced the roast to rubble and packed the meat away into the fridge for the night.  Most of it, anyway.  This morning I finished tearing the meat into shreds.  I put the bones to good use, toasted them in the oven along with some others that we were saving and then made some more stock.

This evening Mrs J was ready to try some of the pork so we had a wonderful dinner of it along with some shoestring fries.The giardiniera works great on these.